Time synchronization is an essential building block in wireless sensor networks but is challenging due to low-precision oscillators and limited computational power of cheap devices. A novel synchronization solution...

Highlights

Small drones become increasingly popular for civil applications, including production of movies and delivery of important goods. The wireless communications and networking of drones is an essential building block in such systems. Lakeside Labs researchers have been working in this domain for several years; now they wrote a comprehensive survey article on the characteristics and requirements of drone networks.

Synchronization algorithms based on the theory of pulse-coupled oscillators are evaluated on programmable radios. It is experimentally demonstrated that the stochastic nature of coupling is a key ingredient for convergence to synchrony. We propose a distributed algorithm for automatic phase rate equalization and show that synchronization precisions below one microsecond are possible.

New packages for the Robot Operating System (ROS) are available for autonomous exploration of unknown environments using collaborating mobile robots equipped with cameras. The software offers wireless ad hoc communications between robots, merging of maps from different robots, and coordinated selection of exploration frontiers. A prototype with four robots was built that demonstrates its functionality in an indoor environment.

Wireless networks are often modeled using tools from stochastic geometry. A team of researchers from Klagenfurt, Athens, and Notre Dame now contributed to these tools by solving general sum-product functionals for Poisson point processes. Link outage probabilities are derived for networks with interference and Nakagami fading.

Aerial delivery services using small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been proposed by major online retailers, logistics companies, and startups. An interdisciplinary project team at the University of Klagenfurt aims at contributing to the architectural setup and distributed control of such future systems.

Study in Klagenfurt

The University of Klagenfurt launches a two-year master program in Information and Communications Engineering (ICE). The program is taught entirely in English and is recommended for students with an...